Archive for the ‘Behind the Scenes’ Category

UNCG Professor K. Porter Aichele with students viewing works from the WAM Collection

The Weatherspoon Art Museum’s permanent collection provides a unique resource for UNCG faculty and the courses they teach. With advance planning, faculty may request that works from the collection be presented to their classes for an up-close experience.

Recently, Professor K. Porter Aichele requested a viewing of works from the collection for the course Research on Women Artists since the 1976 Exhibition. Students were able to present research alongside their chosen artwork, which provided the opportunity for direct observation and elicited further discussion.

One of the students remarked about the artwork she selected to research for her paper: “I just needed to see it. I had an image, but it’s not the same.”

In the images above, participants draw close to Julie Heffernan’s Accumulated Self Portrait, 1996, to take in the presenter’s comment that at first glance we see “a world that looks tame and nurturing but which, upon closer inspection, is much darker.”

Judy Pfaff installation at the Weatherspoon Art Museum in the Falk Gallery

Last Tuesday night (January 4), Judy Pfaff and her assistant Rob van Erve arrived from New York with a 26 ft. truck full of artwork. Wednesday morning, they and Weatherspoon staff got busy unloading the truck, which was chock-a-block with countless small and large pieces of metal, tree limbs, paper lanterns and other equipment and unidentifiable materials to be used in Judy Pfaff’s installation. Over the course of the past two days, these parts have been gradually evolving into a marvelous installation in the Weatherspoon’s Falk Gallery. Here are pics of what the space looked like as they started unloading the truck, and what it looked like this morning. In the coming days, the work will continue to progress and transform into a beautiful exhibition that opens next Thursday.

Before travelling to Chicago, the mobile was carefully packed by our preparators to ensure it would not be mobile in transit. Each element was wrapped in archival material to protect the vibrant paint and tied down with twill tape to prevent movement (pictured below). Upon the return of the work, we were pleased to find our Calder had travelled well.

It’s exhibition installation time, one of my favorite parts of working at the museum. We’re gearing up for Art on Paper 2010, & this past week we’ve been receiving shipments (we had a loading dock full of artwork of every shape & size…see Mark Fox‘s work Pale Sawhorseman crated above), moving the works to our three upstairs galleries, & condition reporting (when we record the condition of each object). Our preparators have started installing some works, including Ghost Forest (Old News) by Katie Holten, seen in the photo below.
This week will be very busy – but ultimately very gratifying once all 75 works are installed & we open the doors for the Preview Party on the evening of Saturday, November 6.
— Heather Moore, Registrar, Weatherspoon Art Museum

If you recently drove by the Weatherspoon and spied the new lettering on the front and back of the building…and then wondered if it was always up there or thought you just hadn’t noticed it before…well, we now have evidence in the form of a photo gallery posted on the site showing the August 5, 2010 installation.